Show Notes
Friends, a great professor of mine at Mundelein Seminary, Dr. Richard Issel, once said, “If you want to be happy, stop worrying about being happy and get on with becoming fulfilled.” We find something similar in Jordan Peterson’s observation that “self-consciousness is equivalent to misery.” In short, we’re most unhappy when we’re turned inward, fussing about ourselves. If you want to be psychologically healthy, forget about yourself and move out toward others. I always think of this when I come across our Gospel for today from the great Sermon on the Mount.
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Friends, our Gospel this Sunday is from the twenty-second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus has been doing battle with the scribes and Pharisees, and this passage brings that great argument to a conclusion in an interesting way. One of the teachers of the law, making an old move in rabbinic circles, tests him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” In other words, can you sum up the richness and complexity of the law in one statement? When Jesus gives his answer, we’re on holy ground, because this is not just one rabbi among many but the Lord—the Word made flesh—telling us what’s at the very heart of the matter.
Friends, on this Twenty-ninth Sunday of the year, our Gospel features the question from the Pharisees about paying taxes. In response to the trap, Jesus offers one of the most famous one-liners in history: “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God." His answer didn’t automatically solve the problem of the relationship between church and state, but it did point the way through two opposite extremes, both of which are predicated on a false understanding of how God relates to the world.
Friends, our Gospel today is the parable of the wedding banquet, and like all the parables, it’s kind of unsettling. What we’re meant to see is that this invitation from the king is the greatest invitation possible. God the Father is asking you, personally, to come to the marriage feast for his son. Therefore, the refusal to accept that offer is the central tragedy of the spiritual life. Will you say yes to God’s invitation? And not only that, but will you behave as someone who is worthy of being in God’s house?
Friends, in our second reading this Sunday, Paul tells the church of Philippi, “Have no anxiety at all.” It’s hard to imagine that Paul—who was shipwrecked many times, beaten within an inch of his life, threatened and harassed and persecuted and opposed, and finally arrested, dragged to Rome, and decapitated—never experienced any anxiety. So what does he mean? What he says next is the clue: “But in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”
Friends, our second reading, a passage from the second chapter of Paul to the Philippians, is one of the master texts in the New Testament. It’s not only ancient and poetic but also substantive; indeed, in some ways, it lays out the whole of Christianity. Adapting an early Christian hymn, Paul presents the answer to Adam’s grasp at divinity—namely, the self-emptying love of God.